The label specializes in ska, punk, oi!, psychobilly and hardcore bands. Give 'Em the Boot, a Hellcat label sampler which also includes tracks from other up-and-coming independent bands, has been issued every other year since 1997, with the exceptions of the third release, which was released three years after the second, and the last one, which was released one year after the one before it.

Hellcat Records has been involved in a feud with one of its former bands, Leftöver Crack, over censorship issues. The band wanted their 2001 debut album to be titled Shoot the Kids at School, with the cover art depicting a gun-toting arm aiming at a playground. In the aftermath of the Columbine High School massacre, the plant pressing the record and labels, not Hellcat, refused to allow this. The band titled their album Mediocre Generica in protest, as a veiled reference to what they viewed as the mediocrity of the bands on Hellcat's label. This incident ultimately led to Leftöver Crack departing from the label, regardless of who was responsible for the choice.

After leaving the label, Leftöver Crack accused Hellcat Records of promoting sexism and homophobia within the punk community. The accusations are based on allegedly homophobic lyrics by the now-departed U.S. Bombs, Hellcat's attempted signing of controversial reggae artist Buju Banton, and Lars Frederiksen and the Bastards' allegedly sexist lyrics and use of naked women in label art.[2] Leftöver Crack also addressed these issues explicitly in their song "Gay Rude Boys Unite". The song, written in response to perceived homophobic artists on Hellcat Records, makes jeering homage to Operation Ivy - Tim Armstrong's pre-Rancid band - in both its music and lyrics, lamenting what Leftöver Crack saw as Armstrong/Hellcat's hypocrisy between rhetoric and practice.[2]

Rancid and the label met with some backlash for the 2003 album, Indestructible, which was jointly released through Hellcat Records and major label Warner Bros. To ease tension among the fans, Warner's name and logo were nowhere to be found on the album's packaging, only the Hellcat Records logo.